De-Dollarization Accelerates: Central Banks Dump Dollar In Q4, Buy Yuan
The dollar’s share of global central-bank reserves slumped to the lowest level since 2013 while holdings of the Chinese yuan rose for the fifth quarter in the past six, IMF data showed Friday.
The U.S. currency accounted for 61.7% of global allocated foreign-exchange reserves in the fourth quarter, down from 61.9% and the tenth decline in the past 12 quarters according to the IMF’s Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) for Q4 2018 report. The drop occurred despite a 1% jump in the value of the dollar in the fourth quarter. The euro, yen and yuan each gained as a share of allocated reserves. While modest at just 1.9%, reserve allocation to the Chinese Yuan has been increasing rapidly and is now almost double where it was two years ago.
The chart below shows the main takeaways from the report: reserve managers actively decreased their allocation to USD—the share of USD reserves declined despite modest Dollar appreciation—while they actively added to EUR and CNY reserves. According to Goldman calculations, the drop in Q4 USD reserves was equivalent to just over $50 billion in dollar reserves sold.
More specifically, the reported USD share of allocated reserves declined by another 0.3% in Q4. Cumulatively, the USD share has fallen by 3.7% since the end of 2016 and by 1.0% in 2018 (despite supportive Dollar price action). Against this, reserve managers continued to add to their EUR reserves with the reported EUR share increasing by 0.2% this quarter, and by 1.6% on net since the end of 2016. Both in Q4 and 2018 as a whole, reserve managers more than offset a weaker Euro to keep the share of EUR reserves on a rising trend, despite a number of political and growth tensions and concerns.
